(Total running time: 80:00 min) 

Bopitr Visenoi

19.09.2549, 2008, 4:10 min
How successful was the military coup in Bangkok, Thailand, on September 19, 2006? What did the Thai people get from this 'important lesson'? The film takes us back to September 19, 2006. Try to watch, listen and recognize the words that the presenter says. We should ask ourselves: have they done what they promised?

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit

Bangkok Tanks, 2007, 5:50 min
A conversation on MSN Messenger 7.0 during the coup of September 19, 2006.


Nuttorn Kangwanklai 

The Duck Empire Strikes Back, 2007, 2:30 min
The fall from power of the rubber ducks.

Anocha Suwichakornpong

3–0, 2007, 8:00 min
I was born in 1976, the year of the October revolution. I was fifteen years old when the Black May incident took place. I was thirty years old on September 19, 2006.


Manatsak Dorkmai

Sports News, 2007, 3:00 min
This film was made for the 2008 New Year’s celebration, and is a tribute to the director John Carpenter. It is not really about any political issues.

Paisit Punpruksachat 

Escape from Popraya 2526, 2007, 9:00 min
The conclusion of the story in the first video. This part unfolds the misery of Tang Siew Chong’s grandchild. Wan won’t say anything about herself or where she is from; she is angry about what happened to Pong. The story from three days earlier is explained and Pong now knows that the grown-ups have forgiven all who did wrong. The rest of the children take to the streets and riot.


Nitipong Thinthupthai 

Krasob, 2007, 8:00 min
The innocent play of children reminds us of our childhood days.


Sanchai Chotirosseranee 

The Love Culprit, 2007, 6:30 min
For as long as I can remember, I have seen the soap opera The Love Culprit’—three times, that is, one time less than I have seen a coup take place. (I have recently heard rumors, though, of another upcoming coup).

Michael Shaowanasai 

Observation of the Monument, 2008, 5:00 min

Pramote Sangsorn

Observation of the Monk, 2008, 7:50 min
An observation of a monk who has taken to the road, to a big city, as a form of merit-making. He discovers capital identity, as well as his self-construction within society and a civilization which is seemingly about to collapse. No matter what, human beings still have to keep discovering themselves, endlessly.

Thunska Pansittivorakul

Middle Earth, 2007, 8:00 min
Middle Earth may not contain anything overtly political, and I am aware that most people won't get it, but I intend the movie as a statement. To show naked men is forbidden in Thailand, but the fact that we did show it on a big screen is a statement (The film was shown as part of the Thai Short Film and Video Festival, and by law wasn't subject to censorship). It says something. It is my political expression. To just show it, without saying anything more, already means something. The authorities ban films for the silliest reasons, so here it is.

Uruphong Raksasad

Roy Tai Phrae, 2008, 3:00 min
I don’t know how it’s going to be in 2008, the year Mr. Samak Sundaravej became the new Prime Minister of Thailand.


Jakrawal Niltumrong 

Man with a Video Camera, 2007, 9:00 min
This movie imagines socialism in a present Thai context, where conflicts of opinion abound. Democracy and a brighter future might just be daydreams to fulfill everybody's desire. The movie is inspired by Dziga Vertov's acclaimed Man with a Movie Camera (1929), which conveys the beauty of the working class and reflects the socialist idea blossoming during the Leninist era, via cinematography, editing, and an arousing score.

The More Things Change: Introducing the 5th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (BEFF 5)

The BEFF 5 Core Program is a snapshot of a society in turmoil, but one taking turmoil in stride. Despite decades of economic growth and a genius for compromise, the Thais find themselves in the throes of ongoing crises, both political and cultural. While they are proud of their country—and the fact that unlike its neighbors, it was never colonized—in reality the national identity is a thinly veiled hybrid, buffeted for centuries by global markets, global ideas, and global conflicts. Modernization has not yielded a stable political culture. Since the overthrow of absolute monarchy in 1932, democracy has stumbled through an unending string of false starts, punctuated by frequent bouts of political upheaval, many of them bloody. Today, the future is as uncertain as ever. With the widely revered King Bhumipol—the only repository of civic trust—now in his eighty-first year, Thailand has entered a period of acute insecurity. Despite the subject being taboo, this insecurity is felt as widely and fearfully as it is repressed, by the great majority of a population that has never known, and would rather not think about, life under any other monarch.
The older dynastic cycle, of which the looming succession crisis is a part, is mirrored in the much shorter political cycle. The economic boom and bust of the 1990s left the country with new aspirations but revealed an atrophied state, easy game for populist telco magnate and national CEO, Thaksin Shinawatra, who swept to power in 2001. With his power bases in the provinces rather than Bangkok, in the police rather than the army, Thaksin seemed—on paper at least—the most democratic prime minister on record. But his erosion of press freedom, civil liberties and checks on state power, and the stench of cronyism, eventually put the urban middle class offside, and they largely condoned the bloodless coup d’état that ousted him in September 2006. This precipitated more than two years of constitutional flux, compounded by the election of his divisive proxy, right-wing demagogue, TV chef and former Bangkok Governor, Samak Sundaravej. Thaksin’s recent self-imposed exile—fleeing prosecution for corruption—has done little to quell the political tremors that disintegrated his Thai Rak Thai party (‘Thais Love Thais’) and hobbled the political system. Even as I write, mobs of protestors are blockading the ministries of Samak’s faltering government, demanding his resignation.
Yet the interface between political culture and power may be shifting from the streets to other channels. While for artists, political intervention is hard to imagine—alienated as they are, like most Thais, from the political theater—a more achievable (and perhaps more urgent) agenda is to document this turmoil that mainstream channels, most of them still controlled by the military, studiously filter out. Our first program for VideoZone, a distillation of BEFF 5’s core programs, provides alternative perspectives on the crisis, and on the wider historical loop of which it is a part. Such direct and critical responses to the malfunctions of the state are rare in Thai screen culture, and reveal much about the psychological and social cycles that structure this society.
While less political, our second program—a compilation of media art and animation—underscores the role of media, and new media in particular, in mediating social life. With broadcasting still dominated by the military, new media (though not immune to censorship) have become important channels for ground-up social discourse, as they have elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Using the web, video, live animation and even music videos, media artists have also established niches on the fringes of commercial culture, sustaining innovative and sometimes critical content.
In Thailand, recorded history has traditionally been the preserve of very small elites. Moving image history is no exception. But with more accessible media, like digital video, a new kind of social history is becoming possible. These programs reveal the emergence of different forms of engagement with social reality, with its matrix of local and global forces. Above all, though, they show the difficulties of speaking to the political present when the past is unspoken and the future is unspeakable.

David Teh, curator, BEFF 5
Bangkok, August 2008

ABOUT BEFF 5

The Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (BEFF) was first held in 1997, to address a lack of local alternatives to the mainstream cinema experience. It is a co-production between independent art organization Project 304, film production house Kick the Machine, and the Thai Film Foundation. Over its five outings to date, BEFF has grown to play a pivotal role in the transformation and invigoration of Bangkok’s burgeoning independent film community.
BEFF is not a hard-core experimental film festival, but rather an inclusive platform for a wide range of alternative screen culture—including artists’ films, video and media art, music videos and animation, independent shorts and experimental documentaries—from Thailand and the world over.
BEFF 5 was the result of an open call for submissions that attracted nearly 400 works from around the world, almost half of them from Thailand. Our 19 programs were screened in March 2008, across four venues in central Bangkok. We then took selected programs on tour to regional universities and independent art venues in seven Thai provinces, reaching audiences with very limited access to alternative cultural channels. In addition to Israel, our International Tour will include Malaysia, Germany, Spain, the U.K., Australia, and Peru.